by Burke, John
Ellen consulted her map. She would have to go some miles inland before the estuary narrowed into a river with a bridge across to the southern bank.
The road climbed steeply from the hotel. When she reached the top she found a lay-by commanding the whole sweep of the bay and the estuary. She pulled in and stopped for a cigarette. She had meant to telephone from the Owain Glyndwr to book a room for the night, but had forgotten. All right: she would experiment with the unannounced arrival, the blouse and slacks and vanity case. Just to see.
Agent provocateur...She heard the murmur of Mark’s voice.
Rubbish. His opinion was no concern of hers.
She leaned on the parapet and looked out over the gleaning water. It looked so tranquil; but still there was a wind, and along the shoreline she could see the ripples moving in fast.
People were clustering near the spur of the harbour. They looked tiny from here, yet very clear. Clear, also, was the dark drifting blob of something that might have been a plank, turning in the water and coming slowly, twistingly towards the shore. No, not a plank. It was too slack, curled and dipped too loosely for that.
Two men went down the steep shelf of sand by the harbour entrance. They appeared to be carrying long sticks. Or harpoons. Or something. They went in the water up to their knees; and waited.
Ellen stubbed out her cigarette on the parapet. She hurried back into the car, swung it perilously round, and drove back down the hill.
They were hauling the thing ashore as she reached the water’s edge. She had been right. Not a plank but a sagging, dripping corpse.
Footsteps clattered over the stones and grit behind the pavilion. A group of men closed in on the body and muttered what might have been an incantation. Somebody sobbed for breath, the footsteps raced closer, and the blue-eyed girl stumbled out on to the sand.
“It isn’t, is it? Couldn’t be.”
One of the men straightened up. “Myfanwy...”
She pushed between them and looked down at the body, its face turned to the sky. Her panting breath was arrested for a moment. Then, with a calm amounting almost to callousness, she said:
“There. Like I said, isn’t it? No right he had to take it out.”
Chapter Three
The inquest was held in the classroom of a small school building. The coroner, a local doctor with a large Gallic nose and swart hairy ears, sat at the teacher’s desk. The coroner’s jury, witnesses and the public were arrayed below with their knees rammed painfully against woodwork. Two reporters at the end of a row looked like sycophantic pupils assiduously taking notes. A woman in a floppy trouser suit, its mauve echoed in her lipstick and a tracery of veins down one side of her nose, sat discordantly close to the ochre of the classroom wall. She was obviously a holidaymaker, revelling in this free addition to Abermadoc’s entertainments.
Identification of the corpse was provided by Commander David Parr of Annwn Cottage and Bryncroeso Hall.
Ellen had been waiting curiously for him to stand up. It was this curiosity, wasn’t it, that had brought her back here? She had taken in Cwmffraw, had a few quick stabs at the debatable culinary delights of the Pembroke hinterland, and persuaded herself that it was logical enough to come round in an arc towards Abermadoc again.
David Parr must have been about forty. He wore very well pressed blue slacks and a navy blue blazer with brass buttons. He was sunburnt, and the light from one of the tall windows struck fitful gleams from his forehead around a sharp, greying widow’s peak. His voice was crisp, almost brusque. He sounded a man who wanted no argument. If he answered a question, it was answered and that was an end of it. No need to pursue the matter further.
“You knew the deceased, Commander Parr?”
“Dr Jude Mansell. Geologist from Bangor.”
“He is a relative or a close friend of yours?”
“He has been staying at Bryncroeso Hall for some weeks...”
“Some weeks, Commander?”
“Ten weeks last Friday,” rasped Parr.
“He was not staying with you when the...um...this misfortune occurred?”
“Staying in my cottage. Here in Abermadoc. Let him have it for a week or two while he worked on his notes.”
“You also allowed him the use of your yacht?”
“No.” Then, for the first time, Parr hedged. “Not exactly.”
“Exactly what, then, Commander?”
“I came a couple of times while he was here and took him out. He didn’t put up much of a show. It’s a Silhouette – easy to handle, very smooth – but he hadn’t really got the hang of it.”
“He was not competent to sail it on his own?”
“No.”
“Yet he appears to have done so.”
The girl Myfanwy stood up, slamming back the hinged seat of the desk. “And look where it got him!”
“Please, Miss...er...” The coroner peered at her down his nose as though to line her up in his sights. Then he nodded. “Ah, yes. Miss Evans. Do sit down, there’s a good girl.”
Myfanwy sat down.
The coroner’s gaze returned expectantly to Parr. Parr, however, seemed to have said all he wished to say. There was an awkward pause. The coroner prompted him:
“You are saying that the deceased took your vessel at night without your permission and...”
“All I’m saying is that his name was Mansell. Dr Jude Mansell. He was staying in my cottage. I took him out sailing twice. The body that was washed up in Abermadoc was his. The boat found next day aground in Caitlin’s Cove was mine. That’s absolutely all I know about it.”
David Parr sat down.
Ellen wondered if he was the sort of restaurateur who tells you what you must eat in his establishment, what you must wear while you are eating, which wine you must have whether you like it or not – and who throws you out if you reach for the salt cellar or light a cigarette.
The coroner proceeded to find out what had happened; or what might reasonably be presumed to have happened.
It had been a moonlit night, with a fresh southerly breeze. If Dr Mansell had, in spite of his apparent amateurishness, managed to get the sail up, he could have sailed fairly easily out of the harbour before getting the full force of the crosswind. Even then he ought to have been in no danger. Or at least, the implication was, nobody with any modicum of skill at all would have been in any danger.
What had possessed him to go out on his own at that time of night?
The harbourmaster, whose name was Evans, said profoundly that you never could tell. Dr Mansell had kept himself to himself – “Always scribbling, and there was somewhere else he’d always got his mind, see” – but he did seem to like the shore. Maybe it helped him to think.
Myfanwy nodded and sniffed and began to fidget in her desk. She fiddled with the flap. The coroner shot her a warning glance and for a moment she sat stiffly upright like a child not wanting to risk punishment.
Ellen realised that the harbourmaster was her father. They had the same features, but Myfanwy’s were a bleached-out version of his dark negative: her cheeks white where his were leathery, her eyes that piercing blue where his were like glistening sloes.
Overawed by the classroom atmosphere, Myfanwy suddenly put up her hand.
The coroner jumped, suppressed a smile, and said: “You have an observation to make which may help us, Miss Evans?”
Myfanwy stood up. “Please, sir,” she said bravely, “that feller, that Dr whatever, there’s mad he was on Commander Parr’s boat. Used to row the dinghy out and climb aboard and sit there and scribble, scribble, all the time. Or just sit there. I saw him sometimes, see, when the tide was making, letting himself be rocked to and fro. Just like a great big baby he was.”
“Thank you.”
So Dr Jude Mansell had been eager to sail, had fallen under the spell of a moonlit night, had managed to rig the Silhouette somehow or other, and had sailed it out into the bay. His corpse had returned to Abermadoc; the boat had reappeare
d in a lonely cove four miles down the coast.
The man who found the boat was called to give evidence.
He intoned something in Welsh at great poetic length. It might have won a prize at an Eisteddfod and would undoubtedly have stimulated Benjamin Britten to set it to music, but as a coherent communication it left a lot to be desired. Even the coroner, though Welsh-speaking, allowed his attention to wander after a while, and eventually turned with some relief to the efficient summing-up of a police sergeant. The corpse had sustained a very serious blow on the back of the head. It would not in itself have proved fatal, though it might well have caused concussion. If Dr Mansell had slipped and struck his head in this fashion and then rolled overboard, his chances of recovering consciousness quickly enough to save himself were slight. Examination of Commander Parr’s Silhouette had shown a smear of blood and a few hairs on the boom; blood group and hair matched with Mansell’s. It was unusual for a boom to strike with quite such force, but allowing for the victim’s general amateurishness and the likelihood of his getting into an uncontrollable gybe in that wind, it was not impossible.
The coroner said: “Commander Parr, I wonder if you would mind my asking you a few more questions?”
David Parr stood up again. He looked resigned but not patient.
“The state of your boat when it was found – had any substantial damage been done?”
“None.”
“Very fortunate.”
“Very.”
“It simply drifted ashore, grounded, and stayed there?”
“Apparently. I wasn’t there at the time.”
Too snappish, thought Ellen. Much too stuffy and aggressive for his age.
The coroner said mildly: “From your own experience, would you say that the deceased had rigged the boat competently, or was it in such a condition as to be dangerous?”
David Parr, brightening, delivered himself of a swift rattle of technicalities which meant nothing to Ellen but to which several of the assembled company listened with the devoutness of experts.
“I see,” said the coroner. Ellen hoped he did.
She became aware of another gaze fixed intently on David Parr. Glancing along the row she saw Myfanwy’s blue eyes raised adoringly.
The coroner was saying: “Would you say, Commander, that Dr Mansell was disturbed in any way?”
“Disturbed? Oh, you mean was he bonkers – mad scientist, that sort of thing?”
“I meant nothing so extreme. Since, I gather, you had been his host for some weeks...ah, ten weeks, I think you specified...it occurred to me that you might have had occasion to note any signs of stress due to overwork, or perhaps to personal or professional worries.”
“No. He was a bit vague sometimes, but never about his work.”
“Geology,” said the coroner.
“Geology.”
“There was nothing in the nature of his work while he was with you that would have upset him, preyed on his mind; taken too much out of him?”
“Damned if I see why.” Parr’s irascibility was on the increase. “Perfectly straightforward work, as far as I could see. Wasn’t one of the team myself, of course – just the cook – but they didn’t strike me as being overworked.”
“One of the team?” It was a questioning echo.
“You can read all about it in the local papers for last January.” Parr took a deep breath, as though preparing to bark it all out and get it done with and then sit down or go home. “The old Gwynbach mine is on my land. The original workings were crude – precious little technological aid, just men crawling into the hillside on their hands and knees. Don’t get much gold out that way. The Cadwallader Mining Foundation wanted to spend some money on experimenting with new extraction methods. Don’t ask me what. Navy myself, not a sapper. Judy was the top boy. Knew the lot.”
“Judy? Er...”
“Jude,” said Parr, knowing perfectly well, as everyone else in the room did, that the coroner knew who he was talking about. “Dr Mansell. They drilled a few holes.” Grubbed a lot of bits up. Coming back after six months and twelve months to check progress.”
“Progress?” said the coroner. “If they’ve gone away, how can there be any progress?”
“Look. They rented the place from me, it’s all open and aboveboard, it’s subsidised by this Foundation, they’re experimenting. That’s it, right? Ju...Dr Mansell rented my cottage to have some peace and quiet while he worked out the basis of the report they’re going to put up to the Foundation – and now he’s been drowned.”
“Quite. When did you last see him?”
David Parr stood erect, formal, overbearing. When he hesitated it was not because of any real doubts in his own mind but because he wanted you to know that he was checking and double-checking and that when he spoke it would be definitive. He said:
“A week last Thursday. The second time we went out sailing.”
“And after that he went on preparing his report?”
“I assume so. I’ve told you: that was the last time I saw him.”
Ellen felt an unaccountable dampness around the back of her neck. She thought of the car racketing away from Bryncroeso in the direction of Abermadoc. She thought of putting up her hand as Myfanwy had done.
And saying what?
Please, teacher, I saw a car that night, the night this Dr Mansell must have gone out, the car that I think is his, the one behind the cottage …
You think?
Well, I can’t be sure because it was dark, and I don’t remember the number plate, and there were two lots of headlights blazing away at each other, and...What? My interest in this case...? Well …
Just about the same, really, as the woman in the mauve trouser suit.
Nosiness.
It’s just that I have this hunch …
What hunch? What did it add up to?
The coroner was asking David Parr something else. Something polite and formal, as though snipping off the ends of the string now that the parcel was neatly tied up. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the right question.
Yet when, finally, he summed up, it was all as rational as one could have wished. There were gaps, to be sure; but none of them suspicious, none inexplicable. Dr Mansell’s vagueness and impetuousness might be hard to explain, but no more so than most human motives and impulses. He had no relations who could be traced, and no enemies. Geology was a dull, undramatic subject. He was not on secret work, he was not an atomic scientist, he was neither hard-pressed nor neurotic. His draft notes for the report to the Cadwallader Foundation were neatly stacked on the table in the cottage: it seemed unlikely that anything had been stolen since there was nothing conceivable to steal. The new experimental process might be confidential – “No use asking me,” David Parr had said before sitting down – but only in the sense that any possibly commercial process is confidential until somebody breaks the secret or its sponsors decide to publish their findings.
There was only one sensible verdict, and it was reached.
Death by misadventure.
Outside in the sunshine, Ellen found herself face to face with Myfanwy. The wild eyes widened.
“Oh. You're back.”
“I happened to be passing through again,” said Ellen lamely.
“Happened,” said Myfanwy with justifiable scorn. But she didn’t move away. She seemed to be waiting; and needed an excuse – needed, again, an audience. She tossed her hair back and stared up at the hillside, the sunlight streaming down the slopes like a wide torrent. “Nothing but trouble there’s been around this town. A curse there is on it.”
Ellen, too, looked around. Vaguely she had half expected Mark Nicholson to be here. Unlike herself, he had evidently stuck to his task and headed resolutely away from the district. There was no reason why she should feel disappointed, even only vaguely disappointed.
“They say,” Myfanwy was intoning, “the blood of Owain ap Morgan, henchman of Owain Glyndwr, flowed until there’s red the rocks were, and so ther
e’ll always be scarlet heather on the hill and over the moor.”
Ellen wondered if Myfanwy had had a part to play in last year’s local pageant or something of the sort. Briskly she said: “The heather’s the usual heather colour.”
“Scarlet with blood it is,” Myfanwy insisted. Then, abruptly: “Funny you came back, now, isn’t it. And you asking all them questions.” She wanted to include Ellen in those responsible for trouble and the bloodstained heather. “Any more you got to ask, then?”
Irritated by the mixture of feyness and aggressiveness, Ellen said: “I wouldn’t mind asking how that boat came ashore so safely. Unscathed. A stroke of luck, wouldn’t you say? You don’t think somebody could have sailed it back?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Ellen had to be frank. “Neither do I.”
“You go round saying things like that, and...and...”
Myfanwy’s eyes strayed. She watched someone behind Ellen.
David Parr came up to them. He crouched against the wind and cupped his hands so that he could light his pipe, then said: “Hello, Myfanwy.”
“Hello.” Her throat pulsed. “David.” Close to, he looked less rugged than Ellen had first thought. The flesh round his jaw and under his eyes was slightly pouchy, and the way he was gnawing his pipe was tetchy rather than masterful. Myfanwy yearned at him.
He smiled a controlled, polite smile at Ellen. The quick flick of his gaze took in her legs, the neck of her sage-green nylon blouse, and her bare forearms. He was waiting to be introduced.
Instead, Myfanwy blurted out: “A lot of questions she was asking, this one. About you. The day it happened.”
He sucked at his pipe and went on looking at Ellen.
Mark Nicholson had been right to clear out and forget the whole silly business. Ellen, trapped, said: “Only casually. Really, it was just a coincidence, being in one place and then the other.”
“Which places?”
“I went to the Hall in the hope of getting a meal.”
“Without booking?”
